Relatives said Mary Ellen Edison was speaking to a neighbor when the 80-pound bull mastiff came over a fence at the Elsmere trailer park where they live, grabbed the woman by the throat and mauled her.

A contractor working nearby managed to fight the dog off the woman and brought her inside a trailer.

"I don't think it's safe to have this dog in the area," said Dan Evans, director of Kenton County Animal Control. "No one wants to see a dog destroyed, put to sleep, but I think for the safety – if it was my children or my mother, I don't want that dog in that neighborhood."

The family that's keeping the dog said it belonged to a relative who's in jail.

Kenton County Animal Control issued a citation, requiring the owners to quarantine the dog for 10 days.